superfetch is just running my HD

Z

ZippZopp

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 30, 2007
Messages
380
I got vista ultimate installed and noticed tons of activity on my hard drive. it seems like it is constantly going. so i go to the services and stop Superfetch and my hard drive activity subsides. whats the deal with this? why is superfetch making my hard drive run a lot? its a clean install of vista done just a few hours ago... what gives here?
 
From what I understand, superfetch rearranges any data on your harddrive to prioritize the most-used apps, sort of like active defragging.
 
dyesan said:
From what I understand, superfetch rearranges any data on your harddrive to prioritize the most-used apps, sort of like active defragging.
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That's not what superfetch does.

From MS site:
SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they'll be ready when you need them.
Click to expand...
 
I left mine on, and I can hear my hard drives all the time, I have raptors so they are inherently louder anyways. I don't ever notice a slow down because of it though, so I just leave it on.
 
i have a raptor as well, so it is a little louder. i disabled the indexing so i'll see if that helps, then maybe i'll do a test to see how the system runs with both superfetch on and off
 
You guys know that you're supposed to let Superfetch and the Indexer do their thing for a few days, and after that everything speeds up immensely, right? I've had Vista Business installed for months now and I don't get anywhere near constant disk access.

Be patient before you disable one of the best features in Vista.
 
Why do people fear little hard drive spinning? That’s what it’s for! Desktop search might be the best OS feature in Vista, I urge people to read up on it. There are a couple of things that you have to do to get it setup for searching PDF’s and other document types, but is extremely fast and accurate and useful.

I’m a business software developer, and I have a ton of code in various languages and developed with various tools. Desktop search will actually search and index code any source code, very useful.
 
I've killed them both, because I use a few pieces of older software which are apparently too stupid to request the RAM they need be handed over. For all the ranting people have done in response, I notice no slowdown as a result of disabling SuperFetch, and I had it enabled for months, so it had plenty of time to 'learn'.
 
I'm not a big fan of Superfetch overall. I personally don't want the OS to load everything into RAM when I first startup. I would rather have a quick startup and a little delay when starting the application but once the application has been loaded to leave it in RAM until something else needs the RAM. That way, if I close the application and start it up again, it's practically instantaneous. I don't use every application every time I startup Vista so I don't want to have to wait for Vista to preload it every time. That said, I have not actually disabled Superfetch. At this point, I don't use Vista all that much which is probably one reason why.

As for indexing, I always disable that and it's usually one of the first things I disable on every operating system. I can count on one hand the number of times I do a search in probably six months time. About the only files I might need to look for are files I have downloaded or created. In that case, I already know where they are as I sort my files after they are downloaded or created. The initial indexing and subsequent updates trying to keep track of anything that changed just annoys the hell out of me.

The sound of hard drive accesses don't bother me. Constantly having to listen to it while it indexes more than a terabyte of files does bother me. Basically, if I'm not initiating the drive access on my own (such as copying or creating files) I don't want my hard drives doing any type of heavy accessing. If any of my hard drives are thrashing outside of copy/create events, then there is usually something going on which shouldn't be. I have enough RAM so I don't have to listen to the noise during normal operation.

One of the first times I installed Vista I let indexing go. After more than a day of constant drive access I disabled it and vowed never to go through that again. I wasn't ever able to tell what the drive access is for. Sure, it might have stopped after a couple of days but that was more annoyance than what I wanted to go through.

 
-=Antimatter=- said:
You guys know that you're supposed to let Superfetch and the Indexer do their thing for a few days, and after that everything speeds up immensely, right? I've had Vista Business installed for months now and I don't get anywhere near constant disk access.

Be patient before you disable one of the best features in Vista.
Click to expand...

This seems to be very common. The first week or so does see a lot of Hard Drive activity, but once it's been up and running for a while it settles down. Hard drive activity on this machine is pretty minimal for me at this point. Next to nothing in fact.

Once Vista is installed it does a lot of stuff for the first week or so of use. Indexing, defragging, etc. It takes a while for it all to settle down, but once it does it's no worse than XP for disk usage.
 
I had the same issue with TONS of HD activity. Its normal. I have plenty on Ram and this happens on both 32-Bit vista and 64bit which i tried. Did not like speed of vista and i have a lot of compatibility problems, crackling sound is definatley annoying, i know its probably a creative driver issue but its back to XP for me for a long time. I tried RC 1 for Vista and it helps compatibility problems alot but doesnt solve the speed issue. This could change but for now im staying away.
 
SmokeRngs said:
I'm not a big fan of Superfetch overall. I personally don't want the OS to load everything into RAM when I first startup. I would rather have a quick startup and a little delay when starting the application but once the application has been loaded to leave it in RAM until something else needs the RAM.
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That IS the way it works. That's the way it's worked for just about ever. Vista still does that, it just loads more stuff in advance,
I don't want to have to wait for Vista to preload it every time. That said, I have not actually disabled Superfetch.
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It doesn't make you wait. It keeps loading stuff even after it's given you a GUI.
 
SmokeRngs said:
I'm not a big fan of Superfetch overall. I personally don't want the OS to load everything into RAM when I first startup. I would rather have a quick startup and a little delay when starting the application but once the application has been loaded to leave it in RAM until something else needs the RAM. That way, if I close the application and start it up again, it's practically instantaneous. I don't use every application every time I startup Vista so I don't want to have to wait for Vista to preload it every time. That said, I have not actually disabled Superfetch. At this point, I don't use Vista all that much which is probably one reason why.

As for indexing, I always disable that and it's usually one of the first things I disable on every operating system. I can count on one hand the number of times I do a search in probably six months time. About the only files I might need to look for are files I have downloaded or created. In that case, I already know where they are as I sort my files after they are downloaded or created. The initial indexing and subsequent updates trying to keep track of anything that changed just annoys the hell out of me.

The sound of hard drive accesses don't bother me. Constantly having to listen to it while it indexes more than a terabyte of files does bother me. Basically, if I'm not initiating the drive access on my own (such as copying or creating files) I don't want my hard drives doing any type of heavy accessing. If any of my hard drives are thrashing outside of copy/create events, then there is usually something going on which shouldn't be. I have enough RAM so I don't have to listen to the noise during normal operation.

One of the first times I installed Vista I let indexing go. After more than a day of constant drive access I disabled it and vowed never to go through that again. I wasn't ever able to tell what the drive access is for. Sure, it might have stopped after a couple of days but that was more annoyance than what I wanted to go through.

Click to expand...

god you dont know what you are talking about at all.
 
Just read this article by Mark Russinovich. Most clear concise description of the new memory management model around.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/03/VistaKernel/

I still say we need a sticky linking to his three articles about Vista that were in Technet magazine early last year. Don't post anything about what Vista does or doesn't do until you read them should be a rule. They are short, concise, and clear.

Inside the Windows Vista Kernel: Part 1 http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/02/VistaKernel/

Inside the Windows Vista Kernel: Part 2
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/03/VistaKernel/

Inside the Windows Vista Kernel: Part 3
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/04/VistaKernel/
 
nessus said:
I still say we need a sticky linking to his three articles about Vista that were in Technet magazine early last year. Don't post anything about what Vista does or doesn't do until you read them should be a rule. They are short, concise, and clear.
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This man is spot on. I am a Technet subscriber, although I really should be MSDN, but I received this mag and the others and got a kick out of reading the info found within. They're not hard to understand and explain (well, I might add) some of the internals of Windows Vista. I look forward to learning about the insides of newer OS's when they're released--I just wish more developers discussed this type of info, this in-depth, about their products..

Superfetch is amazing. And after some time it learns my patterns very well. I don't know if that's because I do so many different things on my 1 machine, or that I have a predictable schedule(I'd like to think not). I suppose ppl who are just gaming on their machine won't get _that_ much use out of Superfetch, but, still there should be some difference.

As for Indexing, I'm also very glad I have it's accessibility with my 1.5 TB worth of data. Most of the time I know exactly where a file may preside, as I'm very picky about hierarchical folder structures, but when I do need to search for a specific file name it too knows exactly where to look(much better than a generalized search with *'s).


zmjone2992 said:
yep those were all valid points, not to mention most of them were subjective anyhow. Careful who you accuse of being clueless.
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Subjective? Yes. Insightful? No.

Who in the hell waxes intellectual about products or services they barely use, as if they know more than most? Critics, Cynics, and Trolls, that's who.
 
zmjone2992 said:
yep those were all valid points, not to mention most of them were subjective anyhow. Careful who you accuse of being clueless.
Click to expand...

no, they're not at all. let's start with the fact that vista doesn't index your entire drive or anything close to it
 
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